Bonded by the shared interests of their families and a desire to save the world from nuclear peril, Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Sergei V. Kiriyenko deemed their first session of the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on Friday fruitful and grounds for real friendship.

Signaling that he is not caving in to the West, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin named an experienced nuclear scientist Wednesday to head the nation's huge atomic program and urged him to maintain "parity" with the United States.

Moscow will shut down three of eight plants involved in nuclear weapons production amid severe fund shortages, a top government official said. Atomic Energy Minister Viktor N. Mikhailov said Russia's military nuclear program has been cut by half over the past six years and now accounts for 10% of the nuclear industry's output. However, Mikhailov said Russia will complete construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant that it is building in Iran, and he denied U.S.

A clearly tired Boris N. Yeltsin gave often-surprising answers at a news conference Tuesday, forcing his spokesman to tone down a declaration he made about cutting nuclear warheads. He also misidentified Germany and Japan as having nuclear weapons and confused listeners with references to Sweden and Finland. The Russian president, who is 66, underwent open-heart surgery in November of last year but has appeared generally strong since.

Russia will halt all production of weapons-grade plutonium by 2000 and has assured Vice President Al Gore that it has strict control over its existing nuclear weapons, officials announced Tuesday after high-level negotiations between the former Cold War adversaries. The subject of nuclear security dominated talks between Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor S.

Federal authorities who arrested two Lithuanians for allegedly trying to sell tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union acknowledged Tuesday that they have no proof the pair actually could have delivered nuclear devices.

Two immigrants from the former Soviet Union were accused of trying to sell nuclear weapons to federal agents posing as representatives of a Colombian drug cartel. No weapons changed hands, but Alexander Porgrebeshski and Alexander Darchev of the former Soviet republic of Lithuania were caught on audiotape and video negotiating the sale of Soviet-made tactical nuclear weapons and Bulgarian-made nonnuclear surface-to-air missiles Friday at a Miami hotel, investigators said.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin signed his country's historic post-Cold War charter with NATO on Tuesday and then upstaged even that act with a stunning declaration that he will remove all nuclear warheads currently threatening nations belonging to the Western alliance.

Belarus removed its last nuclear missile, leaving Russia as the only remaining nuclear state among the 15 former Soviet republics. Joining a handful of countries that have given up atomic weapons, Belarus delivered its final SS-25 missile to Russia for destruction, under the terms of a 1992 agreement with Washington. Two other former republics, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, have already turned over their nuclear arms to Russia to be dismantled.